Current underwater acoustic systems use time-of-flight or interrogation to control underwater vehicle formation “swimming”, tracking and/or docking. Time-of-flight systems require the use of arrays of transducers at a reference position along with complicated signal processing computations. Acoustic interrogation systems require two-way communication between a reference position and an object position, a situation that may cause problems for covert operations. Furthermore, the object position (e.g., a moving underwater vehicle) must generally be equipped to establish or determine its own position, which adds to the cost and complexity of the underwater vehicle.